I work with parents on this exact question all the time, and especially this time of year, sitting right between Mother's Day and Father's Day, the love you have for your children tends to be at the forefront of your mind. But there's a question I find most parents haven't actually answered yet, even the ones who think they have.

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When I sit down with parents, I find most have thought about who would take care of their children if something happened to them, maybe during a quiet moment on a long drive, or in a conversation with a partner that reached an agreement in their heads but never quite made it onto paper.

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Here's what I tell them, and what most parents don't realize: that agreement in your head, or the agreement with your godparents,  doesn't exist in the eyes of the law. If something happened to you tonight, the decision about who raises your children wouldn't belong to you anymore. It would belong to a court, and a judge who doesn’t know you or your children, or what matters to you.

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Here's what that actually means, and what you can do about it right now.

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The Decision That Gets Handed to a Stranger When You Don't Make It

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When I ask parents what they think would happen, most assume the right people would just step up. A sibling, a grandparent, a godparent, a step-parent, a close friend. The people who love your children would figure it out.

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That's not how the law works.

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When there is no named guardian, a judge appoints one. That judge has never met you or your children. They don't know your family's values, your relationships, or who your kids would feel safest with. They don’t know what you care about, how you would want healthcare decisions made for your kids, or education choices. What they see is a petition from one family member and a competing petition from another, each one certain they are the right choice.

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Family conflict over custody of the kids (and often the money left behind for them)  is one of the most painful things that can happen to a family already in grief. Grandparents, aunts and uncles, siblings, close friends, people who genuinely love your children, can end up in a legal dispute at the worst possible moment in their lives. The outcome is not guaranteed to be what you would have chosen.

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The bottom line: Without a legally named guardian, the decision about who raises your children belongs to a judge, a court system, a process you never want the people you love to get trapped within. The people you trust most may have no legal standing to step in, no matter how obvious the choice seems to everyone in your family.

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The First 72 Hours: The Window Nobody Plans For

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In my planning sessions, I find most parents think about the long-term question: who would raise our children through childhood? Almost none of them think about what happens in the first 72 hours after an emergency.

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Who has the legal authority to pick your children up from school if you were hospitalized tonight? Who can authorize emergency medical care if your child is injured before anyone has had a chance to call a lawyer? Who can step in immediately, not after a court process, but right now?

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This is the gap I close with families upstream, before the crisis, while we still have time to design around it.

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Here is the scenario I walk parents through. Something happens to both of you on a Tuesday evening. Your children are with a sitter. Emergency responders arrive. There is no document anyone can find that names those who should take the children. The sitter has no legal authority. The neighbors have no legal authority. Even the grandparents who live twenty minutes away have no legal authority to take custody in that moment. The authorities follow protocol. Your children are placed in the temporary care of strangers, not because anyone failed them, but because nothing was in place to tell the system what to do. Your will, assuming it names a guardian, is sitting in a filing cabinet somewhere or a lawyer's vault. The person you named still has to be appointed by a court before they can take custody. That process takes weeks or months, not hours.

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This is not a rare worst-case scenario. It is a predictable gap in most guardianship plans. It is the gap I see most often in the plans parents bring me to review.

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A complete plan names two things: the person who would raise your children long-term, and the people who are authorized to provide immediate care in the hours before that longer process unfolds. Without both, there is a gap. And gaps are where already hard situations get much harder.

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This is where having a Kids Protection Plan® changes what those first hours actually look like. A family with a PFL relationship has someone to call. Someone who already knows the plan, knows who you named, knows what you wanted, and can help your family activate everything you put in place. The grandparents who arrived in the middle of the night don't have to figure out what you would have wanted. The named guardian doesn't have to wonder if anyone has the paperwork. The plan is known, the lawyer is reachable, and the family is not navigating any of this alone. That is what a PFL relationship gives a family in the worst moment of their lives.

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The bottom line: The immediate guardian question, what happens in the first 72 hours, is just as important as the long-term one. Most parents have planned for neither.

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The Real Reason Most Parents Keep Putting This Off

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When parents come to me, having put this off for years, I ask them why. The most common reason is that the decision feels permanent. And permanent feels like pressure. What if the person you choose isn't right in ten years? What if your relationship with your sibling changes? What if naming someone means having an awkward conversation with the family member you didn't choose?

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Here's what I tell them: naming a guardian is not a permanent, unchangeable decision. I help my clients update this decision as their children grow, as relationships shift, and as circumstances evolve. What matters is documenting a decision today, based on the people and relationships you have right now.

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As for the discomfort of choosing between family members or friends: that discomfort is real, and it deserves a real conversation. But leaving the decision to a court doesn't protect anyone from awkwardness. It simply removes you from the process entirely and hands the question to a judge who doesn't know any of you.

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What I tell my clients: Naming a guardian is a decision you can revisit and update. Not naming one is a decision you cannot take back.

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The Questions That Matter More Than "Who Do I Trust Most?"

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When I walk parents through this, most start with trust, and that's the right instinct. But trust alone doesn't answer the question.

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The right guardian is the person who would raise your children closest to the way you would raise them yourself. Here are the questions I walk my clients through, out loud, with their partner, and ideally with the person they are considering:

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• Values and parenting style. Does this person share your values in the ways that matter most, around faith, education, discipline, and community? Would your children recognize themselves in the home this person would create?
• Willingness and actual capacity. Have you asked them directly? A guardian who is surprised by their nomination is not the same as one who said yes with a full understanding of what that role means.
• Practical reality. Where does this person live? Would your children need to leave their school, their community, their friends? Is this person in a stage of life where they can realistically take on children?
• Age and long-term health. A grandparent may be the most emotionally obvious choice, but may not be the most practical one over the full arc of your children's childhood.
• Sibling relationships. If you have more than one child, will this person be able to keep them together? Are there any circumstances under which your children might be separated?
• Backup guardians. What happens if your first choice can't serve? Illness, a change in circumstances, or a shift in the relationship could make your primary guardian unavailable. Naming one or two backups ensures there is always someone with clear legal authority to step in.
• If you're naming a couple. Relationships change. If the couple you name separates or divorces, who becomes the guardian? Do they share responsibility? These are questions worth answering now, in writing, rather than leaving to a court later.

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One more thing I make sure my clients understand: a godparent is not a legal guardian. It's one of the most common misconceptions in estate planning. Verbal agreements, informal understandings, and family assumptions carry no legal weight. The only thing that matters is a properly executed legal document.

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There are no perfect answers to these questions. But I walk my clients through them carefully because the goal isn't to find the most responsible person in your family. It's to find the person whose home, values, and life most closely match the one your children already know.

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The bottom line: The guardian question is not simply "who do I trust?" It's "who would raise my children the way I would?" Those are often the same person. But asking the deeper question makes sure you're choosing for the right reasons.

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Why This Isn't a Conversation to Have Alone

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In my experience, naming a guardian is one of the most important decisions a parent will make. It is also one of the most connected decisions in an entire plan, and it doesn't work in isolation.

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The person who raises your children and the person who manages money for your children may not be the same person, and separating those roles is often exactly the right move. The best caregiver in your family may not be the best financial manager. A well-designed plan lets you make those two decisions independently.

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It also raises a harder truth: a guardian named in a plan with no resources behind it is in an impossible position. Naming the right person means very little if there isn't a financial plan supporting them. These decisions: who cares for your children, how their lives will be funded, and what happens in the first 72 hours, don't exist in isolation. They connect to each other in ways that aren't obvious until something goes wrong.

In my work with families, I see these connections every day. The guardian conversation is part of a larger planning process, not a standalone checkbox. When I work with parents on this, I make sure the right people are named, the right resources are in place, and that the people you're counting on actually know what you want. A plan nobody knows about is not a plan. And the relationship doesn't end when the documents are signed. When something happens, your family knows to call me. I know your plan, I know the people you named, and I am there for your family in the moment when you cannot be. That is the part of this work that no document, on its own, can do.

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There's one more piece I bring up that most parents never think to ask about: you can also formally name the people you would never want raising your children. Not just who you want, but who you don't. When I do this with my clients, the document makes it highly unlikely that someone you'd never choose would even come forward as a candidate. This isn't something most attorneys offer as part of a standard plan, but in my view, it's one of the most protective things you can do for your children.

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What I tell my clients: Naming a guardian matters. Naming a guardian as part of a complete Life & Legacy Plan® is what actually protects your children.

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What You Can Do Right Now

If you have children at home and haven't named a guardian, or if you have, but only in a will and not part of a complete Kids Protection Plan, I want to help you change that today. Not because something is about to happen. Because if something did happen, you want to be the one who made that decision, not a judge who has never met your family.

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I help families create a Life & Legacy Plan® that addresses who raises your children, who cares for them immediately in a crisis, and how they will be provided for financially. I don't create one-size-fits-all documents, and the relationship doesn't end at signing. I take the time to understand your specific family, design a plan that actually works when the people you love need it most, and stay in a relationship with you so that when something happens, your family has someone to call who already knows what you wanted.

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Schedule a complimentary 15-minute discovery call, and let's make sure your children are protected, starting today:

Schedule a FREE 15-minute phone call HERE

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This article is a service of Bret Christiansen, a Personal Family Lawyer® Firm. We don’t just draft documents; we ensure you make informed and empowered decisions about life and death, for yourself and the people you love. That's why we offer a Life & Legacy Planning® Session, during which you will get more financially organized than you’ve ever been before and make all the best choices for the people you love. You can begin by calling our office today to schedule a Life & Legacy Planning Session.

The content is sourced from Personal Family Lawyer® for use by Personal Family Lawyer firms, a source believed to be providing accurate information. This material was created for educational and informational purposes only and is not intended as ERISA, tax, legal, or investment advice. If you are seeking legal advice specific to your needs, such advice services must be obtained on your own, separate from this educational material.

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